Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration最新文献

{"title":"How Regional Authorities Act Under Restricted Decentralization: Evidence from the Norwegian Transport Sector","authors":"Julie Runde Krogstad, Merethe Dotterud Leiren","doi":"10.58235/sjpa.v23i2.8659","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58235/sjpa.v23i2.8659","url":null,"abstract":"The literature on decentralization points out that there is a tendency to limit discretion at the local level by, for example, imposing national standards. It is therefore of interest to understand how sub-national authorities act under conditions of political decentralization, which is not followed by a similar delegation of administrative competence. Are sub- national authorities able to make policy changes or do they simply follow the same path as the central state authorities prior to decentralization? Drawing on insights from organisational perspectives, it might be expected that the shift of organisational locus affects policy change. Based on qualitative data, we explore the Norwegian Reform of Government Administration, which transferred the bulk of the national road network to the regional level in 2010. This was a political decentralization reform. The sub-national authorities continued to rely on the national road agency’s competence. Although standards, the professional community in the road agency and limited financial resources hampered the effect of the reform, we find that the regional authorities were able to influence the focus of the road agency towards a more sustainable and holistic regional perspective.","PeriodicalId":31772,"journal":{"name":"Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration","volume":"2007 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83055480","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Adapting Accountability and Emerging Challenges: Contracting-Out in the Transport Sector in Switzerland, Norway and Sweden","authors":"E. Lieberherr, L. Hansson, M. Leiren, Jonas W. Schmid","doi":"10.7892/BORIS.131953","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7892/BORIS.131953","url":null,"abstract":"Government reforms such as contracting-out continue to influence public service provision within infrastructure sectors. Contracting-out involves a detachment of the operators from political decision-making and the creation of intermediary procurement agencies. These reforms therefore tend to require an adaptation of how accountability is implemented. Previously, elected officials delegated their democratic authority (vested in them through public votes) to the public administration and thus more or less controlled service delivery. We address how accountability has been adapted in the context of contracting-out and the challenges that have emerged. We are primarily interested in assessing the ability of the political body to maintain control and the relationship between private service providers, citizens and customers. Using a multiple case study design, we select cases from the public transport sectors at the regional level in Sweden, Norway and Switzerland that represent different contracting-out models. We find that with increasing degrees of autonomy from the state (the two Nordic cases) there are both more adaptations to accountability and also more challenges emerge than the model with direct political control (the Swiss case). The central challenges arise between political- administrative and agency accountability with the involvement of a procurement agency. This has led to reforms to re-integrate the intermediary procurement agencies back into the country administration.","PeriodicalId":31772,"journal":{"name":"Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration","volume":"50 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83251863","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Barriers in the Public Procurement Process: Restricting Long-Term Sustainable Construction of Wooden Buildings","authors":"F. Lindblad","doi":"10.58235/sjpa.v23i2.8650","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58235/sjpa.v23i2.8650","url":null,"abstract":"The municipalities control the planning of new housing projects in Sweden, basing their decisions on the general requirements and future strategic expectations. The activity is managed through the Public Procurement Act or the land allocation process depending on their development strategy. It involves the development of local strategies regarding design and geographical development, as well as the development of suitable procurement methods. Therefore, having the ambition to develop sustainability by increasing the use of wood building solutions imposes new challenges on the procurement process performed by municipalities in Sweden. The aim of this study is to identify ways to overcome barriers in the public procurement process for new building developments based on land allocation projects managed by Swedish municipalities, enabling an increase in wooden multifamily houses in Sweden. The study is based on direct participation at a municipality performing this activity, combined with interviews including municipalities and developers involved in the procurement process using land allocation. The result shows discrepancies in how the municipalities and developers perceive the land allocation activities. Furthermore, national standards, equal evaluation methods and a defined procurement process have been identified as drivers towards an efficient activity, which currently acts as a barrier to the development of wooden multifamily houses.","PeriodicalId":31772,"journal":{"name":"Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83611731","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Does Regular School Transport Influence the Provision of Public Transport Services? Evidence From Norway","authors":"Jørgen Aarhaug, K. Rødseth","doi":"10.58235/sjpa.v23i2.8653","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58235/sjpa.v23i2.8653","url":null,"abstract":"Basic education and public transport services are often provided by local or regional governments. In Norway, they fall within the remit of two different tiers of government, with public transport being the responsibility of regional government (fylke), while basic education (primary and secondary schools) is the responsibility of local government (kommune). \u0000Current efforts to consolidate and reorganize the school structure have yielded mixed results. On the one hand, such changes can help reduce public spending by exploiting economies of scale in the provision of education, for instance by having fewer and larger schools. On the other hand, they are likely to lead to cost increases by expanding the geographic coverage of school transport. Furthermore, transporting schoolchildren during peak commuting hours may exacerbate cost increases for regional governments. \u0000Our paper examines the cost effect of changing the school structure with respect to transport provision. Applying econometric analysis to panel datasets at the municipal and regional levels, we seek to identify the impact of the number of pupils and school size on the costs of providing school transport. We combine these data with data on transport provision to look at the effects of school-related transport on costs and competitive tendering in public transport. We show that a school closure can increase the cost of providing public transportation both by increasing the cost of maintaining the current level of public transport services and by necessitating the expansion of the supply. The empirical results indicate that municipalities’ economic gains from school consolidation generally outweigh the corresponding cost increases related to the provision of public transport.","PeriodicalId":31772,"journal":{"name":"Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration","volume":"63 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83163125","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Transatlantic History of Public Administration: Analyzing the USA, Germany and France, by Fritz Sager, Christian Rosser, Céline Mavrot and Pascal Y. Hurni","authors":"Cemil Eren Fırtın","doi":"10.58235/sjpa.v23i2.8689","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58235/sjpa.v23i2.8689","url":null,"abstract":"Book review A Transatlantic History of Public Administration: Analyzing the USA, Germany and France , by Fritz Sager, Christian Rosser, Celine Mavrot, and Pascal Y. Hurni","PeriodicalId":31772,"journal":{"name":"Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85330838","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"SJPA Special Issue Introduction: Providing ’Hard’ Local Government Services in a Multi-Level, Multi-Actor System","authors":"L. Hansson, Harald Torsteinsen","doi":"10.58235/sjpa.v23i2.8647","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58235/sjpa.v23i2.8647","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction In all Nordic countries, local government is the prime provider of public services to citizens and local communities. Predominant in terms of budgets and work force are ‘soft’ services, including school and pre-school education, and health and social services. For instance, in Norwegian municipalities these represent approximately 75 per cent of total spending (2015). In comparison, ‘hard’ services such as water supply, sewage disposal, waste management, housing and road construction/maintenance constitute a much smaller proportion of municipal budgets, about 10 per cent (2015). In Sweden, the corresponding figure is approximately seven per cent. Although the proportion of ‘soft’ versus ‘hard’ services varies across Nordic countries, the big picture is the same: ‘soft’ services consume most of the budget and workforce. However, given that several ‘hard’ services are provided through municipal or inter-municipal companies, they are not necessarily included in municipal budgets, and are hence viewed as a smaller part of local government activity than is actually the case. For example, although Norway’s electricity supply is primarily provided by companies owned by and paying substantial dividends to local government, it is not formally registered as part of local government. Some ‘hard’ municipal services are entirely financed by user fees in accordance with the principle of cost recovery financing, thus ‘protecting’ them from yearly competition for budget funds in municipal councils. Although included in the regular municipal budgets, a shielded economic position such as this probably reduces political attention and controversies concerning these ‘hard’ services. The composition of tasks at the local and regional government levels varies somewhat across Scandinavian countries. At the regional level, for instance, the proportion of ‘hard’ services in Norway is higher than in Denmark and Sweden. In Norway (2015), public transport is the second largest activity of Norwegian counties, representing 33 per cent of the budgets (compared to 48 per cent for upper secondary schools/high schools), whereas in Sweden it accounts for only 9-10 per cent. Health care is the dominant regional sector in both Denmark (Økonomiog Indenrigsministeriet, 2014) and Sweden, but in Norway this responsibility was transferred from the regional to the national government level","PeriodicalId":31772,"journal":{"name":"Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration","volume":"113 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90387751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Neoliberal Steering in Swedish Integration Policy: The Rise and Fall of Introduction Guides","authors":"Gustav Lidén, Jon Nyhlén, Sara Nyhlén","doi":"10.58235/sjpa.v23i1.8677","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58235/sjpa.v23i1.8677","url":null,"abstract":"In the past decades, many policy sectors within European countries have encountered political reforms of neoliberal character. One of the key shifts has been the reorientation of public employment services that has been enforced, for example, through the establishment of what have been denoted as quasi-markets. Simultaneously with the rise of quasi-markets, welfare policy as a whole, including integration policy, has beenincreasingly oriented toward “activation”, with its focus on the individual’s obligationsand duties in relation to welfare services. These circumstances pose particular challenges to those charged with the governance of welfare services due to increasingly complex requirements for collaboration and control involving a multitude of actors. The reform is an example of a hybrid system where for- and non-profit actors compete for the“customer”, in this case, the newly arrived immigrant. This article focuses on the changes in Swedish integration reform as an archetype of these changes and studies a clearly defined case study. Empirically, this study draws from both documents and interviews. The article illustrates an unregulated and ill-monitored policy containing a model that comprises mixed modes of steering. The governance of the reform bears traits from both centralist and cooperative forms of governance and, thereby, involves competing philosophies of steering.","PeriodicalId":31772,"journal":{"name":"Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration","volume":"52 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80835380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On the Minister’s Tight Leash? Media Appearance and Autonomy in Public Agencies","authors":"Kristoffer Kolltveit","doi":"10.58235/sjpa.v23i1.8680","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58235/sjpa.v23i1.8680","url":null,"abstract":"Public agencies have varying degrees of self-determination. In the existing literature this autonomy is often explained by sector and task. Although agencies are increasingly subject to media scrutiny and public attention, the literature on the autonomy of agencies has not focused much on the impact of the media. Visible agencies might be more able to resist the control of superior bodies. However, reputational threats and poor media management might tempt ministers to increase political control and decrease the autonomy of agencies, or in other words, tighten the leash. Drawing on a 2016 survey of civil servants in Norwegian agencies, this article investigates four aspects of agency autonomy, and relates this to media appearance and media management in the organisation. The results show that agencies frequently in the written press report lower levels of autonomy, while agencies with competent media management have higher levels of autonomy. This suggests that media appearance and media management should be seen as important factors when aiming to explain agency autonomy.","PeriodicalId":31772,"journal":{"name":"Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77713686","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Institutional Maintenance Work as a Response to the Introduction of Inspections in Swedish Schools 2003-2008","authors":"Caroline Waks, Maria Blomgren","doi":"10.58235/sjpa.v23i1.8674","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58235/sjpa.v23i1.8674","url":null,"abstract":"This paper focuses on a national governmental school inspections program that was reintroduced in the Swedish school system in 2003. The program included controls conducted by governmental inspectors whose task was to strictly inspect, ignoring activities such as consulting and advice-giving. In the article, we show that while the reintroduced school inspections pointed to the contours of a stricter audit regime in Sweden, studies of micro-level processes provided a more complex picture. Based on an interview study including inspectors, teachers, principals and public employees in the Swedish school system, our results show that the practices of the inspectors did not change dramatically. The inspectors participated in institutional maintenance work that kept institutionalised practices more or less intact. The paper contributes to the discussion on institutional maintenance work by investigating the role of hybrid professionals (inspectors with dual loyalties and obligations both to the state and to their professional peers) and how their interdependent relationship to stakeholders affected the conditions and character of institutional work activities.","PeriodicalId":31772,"journal":{"name":"Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84995847","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"They Talk the Talk – But Do They Walk the Walk?","authors":"Gissur Ó. Erlingsson, Emanuel Wittberg","doi":"10.58235/sjpa.v22i4.8692","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58235/sjpa.v22i4.8692","url":null,"abstract":"Transparency is recognized as a crucial condition for accountability, good governance and democracy. As right to information (RTI) laws have spread, it is crucial to ask whether ambitious legislative frameworks translate to de facto transparency. In this article, we test how well local governments in Sweden – a ‘most-likely country’ for implementing RTI-laws – comply with its comparatively ambitious Public Access to Information and Secrecy Act. As a side-effect, we also gauge if New Public Management-reforms, here illustrated by increased public ownership of enterprises in local government, implies lessened compliance with RTI-legislation. Requesting information from 462 randomly selected public administrations and municipally owned enterprises, counter-intuitive findings are observed. Less than half of the organizations respected the RTI-legislation, and no significant differences were found between the public administrations and publicly owned enterprises. The findings have methodological as well as empirical implications. They highlight the importance of not only studying legislative frameworks, but also analyzing actual implementation of RTI-frameworks in everyday situations. Also, they demonstrate that problems relating to openness can be observed in low-corrupt, mature democracies with strong bureaucratic capacity that traditionally are hailed for their long history of ambitious RTI-laws. Lastly, and contrary to much popular belief, the findings indicate that publicly owned corporations not necessarily do imply a ‘accountability deficit’.","PeriodicalId":31772,"journal":{"name":"Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration","volume":"58 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87499016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}